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Momentum Continues with the Eighth Annual Ag Innovation Showcase

Tuesday, 27 September 2016
Earlier this month, the Danforth Center hosted a capacity crowd for the eighth annual Ag Innovation Showcase, the world’s premier event focusing on the convergence of agriculture and technology. The Showcase brings together those with a significant stake in agriculture and agricultural technology – entrepreneurs, industry leaders, investors and others – to promote investment in cutting-edge technology and biotechnology to meet the world’s growing demand for sustainable sources of food, fuel and fiber.

With a rapidly growing population, the need to produce greater quantities of food at greater efficiencies with less inputs have created many challenges for producers. Today, consumers demand to “connect” with their food and are concerned about the food system as a whole. This year’s opening keynote - a series of three short presentations provided “views from the farm,” from three very diverse sectors: Midwest commodity farming from investor-owned to professionally managed and investor-owned acres, western specialty crop growers and indoor farming of specialty crops.

Central to the Showcase are presentations from early–stage companies, working at the forefront of the next big solution. This year, 20 companies were chosen from 80 applications. Technologies in precision ag and automation, ag inputs and diagnostics, alternative food systems and developing economies solutions were featured. 10 of the companies were international, 10 were from the United States and six were women-led companies, a growing trend at the Showcase.

Four spotlight sessions showcased new technologies and ideas from initial concept to consumer use. The audience received insight from the viewpoint of a farmer, an innovator, an investor and a university. In his presentation, A View from an Innovator, Matthew Crisp, president and CEO of Benson Hill Biosystems, espoused that, “Innovation is about value creation,” citing companies working outside the agtech space such as Dollar Shave Club and automobile producer Tesla. “These companies dramatically simplified the experience we had to make what was previously a complicated decision. The majority of value that’s created is not about the core innovation; it’s about what’s done upstream and how the company and idea interacts with the customer.” Crisp challenged the audience to “think boldly” and “take advantage of the sea of resources available at the Showcase” to generate one significant innovative idea before the three-day event concluded.

The first disruptive dialogue panel discussed CRISPR gene editing as a case study to understand how diverse stakeholders within the agriculture community are working and communicating with the consumer. CRISPR is a powerful new way to edit genes with seemingly endless applications. As advancements in gene editing technologies have the potential to reshape the planet and help solve problems in feeding and healing the world’s population, it will be imperative that the ag innovation community engage effectively with the consumer in order for the technology to be accepted.

“The biggest hurdle is gaining trust from the marketplace since it’s a new technology,” said Rachel Haurwitz, president and CEO of Caribou Biosciences. Roxi Beck, director of the Center for Food Integrity offered suggestions on how companies can effectively engage with consumers to help them gain trust with this new technology. “We must remember that we are people first and experts second, or even fourth or fifth,” Beck said noting that most scientists want to boast the facts of the technology, but that’s not necessarily what consumers need or want to hear. “Confidence and shared values are three to five times more important in building trust than sharing facts or demonstrating technology, skills or expertise,” she added.

The second disruptive dialogue panel explored the causes for food waste in the U.S. and innovations across the food value chain that are enabling more complete utilization of food production, from matching supply and demand to producing products from food waste. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food waste is estimated at between 30 – 40 percent of the food supply with 31 percent of food loss at the retail and consumer levels. “People keep asking, ‘how are we going to feed nine billion people?’ Well, we can start with not wasting so much food,” said Dan Morash, founder of California Safe Soil. Joanie Taylor, director of consumer affairs and community relations at Schnucks Markets, Inc. commented on the importance of food safety and the opportunities to reduce waste by addressing the confusion that consumers have with food labeling. “Everyone is after what is best for the consumer,” she said. “But there’s a lot of confusion over the dates listed on food – use by, sell by, best by… Getting to a point where we can agree on standards for which to use will help reduce waste dramatically.”

Four thought-provoking special content sessions with speakers from all over the U.S. added another dimension to the program. The View from the University spotlight session highlighted 10 early stage innovations coming out of academia including one innovation from the Danforth Center. Nadia Shakoor, Ph.D., research manager in the Mockler Lab and associate director of the TERRA-REF project, discussed the new LemnaTech Field Scanalyzer, a robotic phenotyper that was recently deployed to advance the improvement of sorghum, a key bioenergy crop. Shakoor also gave a talk on the PheNode, an integrated field phenotyping and management platform for crop development and precision agriculture developed in the Mockler lab.

Vipula Shukla, senior program officer, discovery research agricultural development at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave an inspiring closing keynote about the potential impact translating science and technology can make when shared with developing regions of the world. 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas and the majority of them depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. “Agriculture is a powerful economic lever,” Shukla said. “Agricultural growth builds self-sufficiency for individuals and communities.”

Special congratulations to Christina Davis, founder and chief science advisor of XTB Laboratories Inc. who was chosen as the winner of the Ideas, EnergizedTM Prize, new to the Showcase this year, which included a $10,000 award. Three runner ups for the award were applauded for their outstanding presentations and innovative ideas: Koolmill Systems Limited, Kiverdi and NeoGram.

Many thanks to the members of the Ag Innovation Showcase Advisory Committee and the sponsors of this year’s event. Many of them have been loyal participants over the past eight years and their unwavering support has been critical to the continued success of the event.

Be sure to plant September 11-13, 2017 on your calendar for the ninth annual Showcase in St. Louis.

Are you interested in learning more about this year’s presenters, speakers, panelists and event organizers? Stay in touch with the alumni with this social media directory.